I'm trying to grab the two polys on either side of the edge and wanting to pull-out that as one 'block'.

Extruding those polys of course just pulls each out along the axis they are on....leaving the edge between where it is...so I thought I could weld the points/edges so that I could pull out the highlighted polys as one unit but I'm not getting something.

If you remember the game QBert, there were blocks QBert would bounce on....so that's what I'm looking for...pulling the highlighted polys and the edge between them out as one unit.